Scratch Pad

Taking notes is a useful activity, especially when you have to go through a large amount of info and you need it analyzed. This can easily be done by bringing up a plain text document, and writing down strings of interest. On the other hand, you can use applications like Scratch Pad to keep the desktop clean, and customize text with several options.

A neat advantage is that you don’t have to go through a setup process to make the application work. This means that you can use it on other computers as well, while carrying it on a USB flash drive. What’s more, system registries don’t need to be modified for proper functionality, thus not affecting the health status of the target PC.

The application automatically starts in the system tray, and clicking the corresponding icon reveals the main window. Most of the space is used to store text, with an upper toolbar for several related controls and customization options. You can import clipboard content at the press of a button, undo mistakes, or clear the whole edit area.

Don’t expect a great deal of text customization options, because these only count as a few. As such, you can make text selection bold, italic, or underline in order to emphasize details of interest. What’s more, alignment options make it possible to center text, or keep the left or right side of the panel.

There’s no possibility to directly export notes you write down, unless you manually copy them to another text file. On the other hand, a RTF document is automatically created whenever you close a pad. What’s more, there’s no option to bring up a second tab, or scratch pad. However, running multiple instances is possible, but having too many of them active can be a bit confusing, and difficult to identify the one you need.

Taking everything into consideration, we can say that Scratch Pad can help you quickly write down or paste text strings of interest, and even use basic text customization options. Portability is a neat advantage, with work automatically saved to file when the application is closed, making it worth a try overall.